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Biotech / Medical : HuMAB companies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (116)	2/8/2001 4:32:35 AM
From: nigel bates	Respond to of 1022

MARTINSRIED, Germany and MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- MorphoSys (Neuer Markt: MOR), the Munich-based bio-pharmaceutical company, today announced the achievement of the first milestone in the therapeutic part of its collaboration with Bayer. The milestone, the delivery of a tailored, high affinity HuCAL® antibody for an undisclosed target, triggered a payment from Bayer. The antibody will now move into pre-clinical development at Bayer, which could lead to further milestone as well as royalty payments to MorphoSys. In addition, Bayer exercised an option for the development of a HuCAL® antibody against another target molecule, triggering an additional payment. Financial details were not disclosed. The milestone caps a very successful first year of the collaboration. Under the terms of the agreement, the MorphoSys HuCAL® technology has been installed at Bayer sites in Berkeley, California, as well as in Wuppertal, Germany. In addition to the efforts in the development of therapeutic antibodies, scientists from both companies have successfully applied the MorphoSys HuCAL® technology to a number of research programs for the validation of target molecules. ``The first year of our collaboration has been very productive'', said Dr. Thomas von Rueden, Chief Scientific Officer of MorphoSys AG. ``Our HuCAL® technology has been applied successfully in a number of programs, and we hope this milestone to be the first of many.'' Professor Dr. Wolf-Dieter Busse, Head of Bayer's Biotechnology Business in Berkeley, California, added: ``Our success confirms our expectations for HuCAL®. The MorphoSys technology is the principal element in our strategy to develop antibody-based products, and a very important tool in our characterization of new target molecules.'' MorphoSys develops and applies innovative technologies for the production of synthetic antibodies, which accelerate drug discovery and target characterization. Founded in 1992, the Company's proprietary Human Combinatorial Antibody Library (HuCAL®) technology is used by researchers world-wide for human antibody generation. The Company currently has licensing and research collaborations with Bayer (Berkeley, California/USA), BioGen (Cambridge, Massachusetts/USA), Centocor (Malvern, PA/USA), Chiron (Emeryville, California/USA), DuPont Pharmaceuticals (Wilmington, Delaware/USA), Eos Biotechnology (South San Francisco/California/USA), GPC Biotech AG (Munich/Germany), Hoffmann-La-Roche AG (Basel/Switzerland), ImmunoGen (Cambridge, Massachusetts/USA), Millennium (Cambridge, Mass/USA) and ProChon Biotech (Rehovot/Israel)....